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Bringing Reading Workshop to Life (K–5)

Come think and talk together about creating, managing, and using a reading workshop model in an elementary classroom. Through instructional strategies and structures of a workshop, we create an intentional space for learners to co-construct meaning and apply their ever-developing understandings to texts. This session will support teachers to work with colleagues to problem-solve and plan with the unique issues of workshop in mind.

Reading workshop has become a mainstay in many balanced literacy classrooms. This structure brings organization and provides opportunities for whole-group instruction, small-group instruction, and independent practice. It supports students and teachers to feel the connections among the learning opportunities. Bringing this kind of instruction to life in a workshop structure is challenging for most teachers.

Okapi materials offer rich, inviting texts that students want to revisit and reread with their classmates and on their own. As teachers use Shared Reading texts, they build the base for the independent and small group work to occur. Guided Reading offers time for applying known skills and strategies. Having times for independent practice, where in a station approach, a Daily 5 method, or in an Independent Reading model, books used in whole and small group provide one collection of texts from which students may choose.

Materials that may be emphasized:Flying Start to Literacy, WorldWise, Explorations, Lift Off to Literacy, New Heights